A departure from my usual posts, to pay a somewhat belated farewell one of the great saxophonists to ever grace the earth, Clarence Clemons.
It is with overwhelming sadness that we inform our friends and fans that at 7:00 tonight, Saturday, June 18, our beloved friend and bandmate, Clarence Clemons passed away. The cause was complications from his stroke of last Sunday, June 12th.
Bruce Springsteen said of Clarence: Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.
- Offical Bruce Springsteen (www.brucespringsteen.net)
I remember when I first delved into the classics, and heard Springsteen’s Born to Run. Not the album, just the song. It was intense, with the awesome saxophone solo in the middle. No wonder the album was Springsteen’s ticket to the big time. Off the back of the title track, and the epic Thunder Road, it was lauded as one of the great albums of the 70’s.
Sadly, the great saxophonist – The Minister of Soul, the Biggest Man You Ever Seen, the King of the Universe, the Big Kahuna, Socrates of the Saxophone – whose haunting work on so many brilliant Springsteen songs from the Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ album in 1973 through The Promise in 2010 was lost to us this past Sunday afternoon, succumbing to the effects and complications of a serious stroke. That’s right, the Big Man has sadly left the building.
I came late to the Springsteen party. Sure, I’d heard Born in the USA, Dancing in the Dark, Hungry Heart and Glory Days, but there was so much more to hear of the Boss, and Clemons was right there. Part of the fabric of the E Street band, his haunting, brooding, and powerful saxophone solos giving so much voice and feeling to the epic words blaring at me through the speakers. Think of Jungleland, the sax solo that made the song, the sax solo that the Big Man spent sixteen hours crafting, his crowning glory.
A big piece of E Street is gone, the guy who helped. His death wasn't a huge surprise, given the reports of how serious his stroke had been, but the Big Man had pulled through a lot of bad situations, had been visibly in pain during the mammoth Working on a Dream Tour, arriving on the stage on a chair elevated up from underneath – a sort of mythical entrance form a mythical man – but the Big Man was the Big Man and as so many have said over the last few days, the only thing bigger than his hulking appearance was his heart. And you just figured he’d keep on keeping on, because of that big heart.
Within minutes, the Big Man’s death was trending worldwide on Twitter, and there were all sorts of tributes pouring in – from Bill Clinton to Slash and everyone in between – which just goes to show what sort of a person he was. Clarence Clemons made a lot of people happy right across the world, and any future E Street Band tour will perhaps be a fitting tribute to the guy who seemed to love being up there and blowing on that sax more than anything else in the world.
I got to see Clemons on stage once, and it was perhaps the greatest concert I’ve ever seen. The show was awesome from the start, but boy did it rip into high gear when the first sax solo of the night occurred – Badlands. That was when you knew you were at an E Street gig. The crowd loved it, the band loved it, the Big Man loved it, and, dammit, I loved it. I’m so thankful for the money I paid now, because even if they continue to tour, it won't be the same, and I can't imagine anyone else getting up there to play the epic Jungleland solo.
God bless, Big Man and God speed. God’s putting together one heck of an all-star band up there now, and he just got the right sax guy for the job.
http://www.backstreets.com/clarence/
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